Hi everyone,
These are just some thoughts on the new Attach button found
in the standard tree display. I'm hoping to get some feedback
on this, because while I see some real potential in this
feature its not all the way there yet.
The first reaction of everyone I've spoken with so far (including
myself), is what the h--- is that for?... and why is it sitting
on top of the data? (all right, its just 4 people, but still)
The next reaction (after poking and prodding a bit) is oh,
it joins/collects data from some related object and makes it
a part this view, thats kinda cool.
This is shortly followed by, hey where did it go???, you mean
it only sticks around for as long as the window is open? I
expected it to still be there when another object of that
type was opened up...darn, that's no good. It would have been
simpler to just double-click to to get to the related data....
But still, there is this potential. This is a way of creating
personal views of the data, by joining bits from related objects.
This could be quite powerful, if (and only if) the views could
be made persistent in some way. The closest analog is with
table maker (which is also a way of composing a views). I realize
the 2 are implemented in very different ways, but at least in
table maker (once you've brute forced it to get what you want)
the view can be saved and recovered again. Maybe Attach has this,
and this capability is already there? In that case the problem
is----yet another hidden feature! If persistance is not yet
implemented, would it be worthwhile to do so?
While I'm on the subject of views, it would be very nice to be
able to use table-maker to create custom .ace files. I realize
this is somewhat a perversion of what .ace files have been used
for (database dumps and reloads). But, I find myself using them
more and more to pass data to outside programs. Most of the
time its only a limited set of tags values that are of interest
and it would be handy if I could define this set using table
maker and then produce output that was in .ace format, even if
(strictly speaking) it wasn't .ace data.
So:
1. Does anyone else have any opinions on the Attach feature?
2. Does anyone else ever use customized .ace format files?
-Suzanna
